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BlackRock to Cut ETF Fees

Firm acts after losing market share to rivals like Vanguard.

BlackRock Inc.’s Laurence D. Fink, who heads the world’s largest asset manager, said the firm will announce fee reductions for large exchange-traded funds next quarter, after losing market share to rivals.

“We expect to be announcing a whole strategy in how are we addressing the fee issue related to these large, liquid, core types of ETFs,” Fink, who is chief executive officer of New York-based BlackRock, said today at the Barclays 2012 Global Financial Services Conference.

BlackRock, the world’s largest ETF provider, has lost market share as rivals such as Vanguard Group Inc. attract investors. BlackRock’s U.S. market share in the ETF business fell 1.4 percentage points in the first half of this year to about 41 percent, compared with an increase of 1.7 percentage points for Vanguard to 18 percent, according to a report by State Street Global Advisors.

Fink, whose company drew $23.5 billion deposits into its iShares ETFs this year through June 30, said in July that he wasn’t pleased with BlackRock’s ETF market share in the second quarter.

“You saw risk off, even in ETFs, you had many flows into what I would call the commoditized ETFs, the large, index products, and Vanguard has taken a lot of the share of those flows in those products,” Fink said in an interview July 18.

BlackRock, which manages $3.56 trillion in assets, has integrated the leadership of retail and iShares to improve cross-selling of products, Fink said.

Bloomberg News

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